The Hamlet Project

I bet Hamlet wasn’t expecting to see the king here – since he didn’t know Ophelia had died – he’s not camped out here waiting for him.
But that raises the question of why Hamlet is in the graveyard. Are he and Horatio just out taking a stroll? That’s how I’ve always imagined it. They’re just out for a walk when they, by accident, stumble into a graveyard.
But what if that’s not it? What if they’re there on purpose? Like – to see what happened to Polonius’ body? Maybe to visit his grave to beg his pardon or ask his forgiveness? I’d like a Hamlet who turned up for that reason. I’m not sure it’s actually likely – but I like it.
One reason I know he’s NOT there is to have a psychological/philosophical discussion about death. That just happens to him when he turns up. I suppose he could have had a tip-off that the king is headed that way and he’s there to head him off – but he doesn’t know WHY Claudius is turning up there.

I don’t know why we don’t use this word to get people out of the way anymore. We know what it means. But somehow if we’re going to use it, we have to add the verb. It has to be Step Aside or Move Aside. I don’t know why Aside on its own wouldn’t do the trick.

This repetition of “but soft” is funny – because he’s definitely the only one talking.
So he tells himself to be quiet and then tells himself to be quiet again?
It could be that the first one is to quiet himself – and then when Horatio or the gravedigger look like they’ve about to ask why he tells them to hush up.
Certainly it could be said twice just for emphasis, just for rhythm. But there could also be business!

There are lines that can reliably make middle school boys giggle, given the chance. But soft is one of them. They will often make the quick leap to “Butt Soft” and there will be laughs for days. They’ll be sure they invented this hilarity and I will be sure to allow them this fiction – because, they did, in a way. It’s just that almost every other middle school boy also invented the exact same joke.

This sense of flaw seems like one that Shakespeare could have made up. The word feels like a combination of flood, froze and thaw. Like it’s a word that should exist instead of one that did. But it would appear that flaw once meant flake, as in snowflake. So when snow fell in the 13th century, folks might say “Look at all those flaws!”
“I caught a flaw on my tongue!”
Or when it’s a clear day and suddenly a snowflake seems to appear – “Was that a flaw?”
How did this word shift meaning so dramatically?
I know its sense of flake expanded outside of snow – that you could have a flaw of fire or flint at a certain point …but then from there – how did we get to a sense of blemish or mistake?

PARTICLES of CAESAR, MIXED with SAND and SILT and CLAY
HANGING OUT in a WALL:
No, no, my earthy friends, I am not ambitious for a crown of silt. I am here among my friends to stop up this hole, just as the rest of you are. Just because I once ruled an empire, because I was once an emperor, because I ruled over all I could see, does not mean I want to be treated any differently than the rest of you fellows.

I mean, if you insist, Sand. I wouldn’t want to insult you as we sit here keeping this house from becoming too drafty. For you, then, Sand, I will wear this crown. But of course – we must all hang together here to keep this hole filled.

The ‘they’ in this line is the most compelling bit for me. Who is they? Alexander and the other parts of the loam? The sand? The silt? The water?

It’s not Alexander alone who can stop a beer-barrel. He has to do it as an organic collective.

Loam is, itself, a bit of earth. When it is mixed with water, it is still earth, just earth in a clay form – and while clay is wet it seems one thing – once the air has had its way with it, it becomes another. Loam is kind of the earthy version of water, changing its texture and solidity depending on the environmental conditions.

I’m reading Philip Pullman’s prequel to The Golden Compass series and dust is rather important in that book (it is called The Book of Dust) and rather a lot more than earth. And probably actual dust is also a lot more than earth. Probably dust is just a way to say a very small amount of something that makes it hard to identify as anything else. Like, some dust is ash. Some is skin. Some is wood. Some is lint. And perhaps that is all earth is, too – just a large collection of disparate objects and substances.

I was curious to know if this was the case. Were Alexander’s remains, in fact, in the ground?
And it would seem that they were not. It would be quite difficult for Alexander’s body to make any contact with earth.

Apparently, his body was put into a gold honey-filled sarcophagus and that was put into a gold casket. A tomb was built for it – but on the body’s journey, it was waylaid several times before ending up in Alexandria in a tomb. That is a lot of layers from the earth. Honey, gold, gold, stone.